The 2013/2014 annual crime statistics will be released on Thursday, it has been announced.

New Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko, his deputy Maggie Sotyu and national police commissioner Riah Phiyega will release the figures at the SA Police Service Training Academy in Pretoria.

Last year, the police and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) were at odds about the crime statistics and about how they were calculated.

The ISS said the crime statistics the police released in September contained a miscalculation, and that they were downplaying the rate of violent crime.

At the time, ISS governance, crime and justice division head Gareth Newham said the police had used population estimates calculated by Statistics SA in 2001, and which expected the population to be 50.6 million in 2011.

Instead, they should have used data from the 2011 census, which showed there were 52.3 million people in South Africa.

By not updating the population, the police had understated the increase in serious and violent crimes, Newham said.

The offices of both the police ministry and the national police commissioner dismissed the criticism.

The police's crime statistics released in September last year indicated that the murder rate was 0.6 percent. The ISS claimed the correct figure was 2.6 percent.

According to the police, attempted murder went up 6.5 percent, but the ISS put the figure at 8.7 percent.